A user experience research on the integration of air conditioning unit into infotainment systems in automobiles

The climate control unit of the recently produced automobiles are now controlled via a touchscreen of the infotainment system. This is a fairly new technology that has started to be implemented in a very limited number of models over the last decade. This new technology showcases the advancements in the cockpit design of the automobiles, but also raises concerns and discussions to be evaluated from the user perspective. With this new technology, the haptic feedback from the physical buttons are now taken out and the new controls need the visual attention of the users. However, this creates a problem regarding driver distraction and user convenience. To be able to make a research that is supported by evidence, user tests and surveys will be conducted within this thesis. The outcome from these experiments were utilized to bring together generic user feedback for this new technology. To be able to ask the right questions to end-users, separate interviews with user experience designers working in the automotive industry were organized and their opinions were asked. Analysis of the interviews, surveys and user tests were analyzed in a separate chapter. A conclusion chapter summarizes the findings from the previous chapters. Qualitative data collection methods will be used in this work. These methods consist of expert interviews in the first step. In the second step, end-users are found from different demographics and user tests are conducted with them. A number of questions are directed to these users before and after they use an automobile with the climate control integrated into the infotainment system. During their driving time, users are asked to complete a number of tasks in different traffic conditions. The results from the surveys and from the driving experience were analyzed in detail. Keywords: User experience research, Infotainment system, Climate control unit, Touchscreens in vehicles